Originally Posted by
m907
RIC does have Ultimate Choice despite being a smaller airport. The rental car center is a short walk from the terminal.
The lanes are pretty small with about 10-12 cars per section. On Saturday, PC had several Chrysler 300s, 4-cyl Mustangs, and one Infiniti Q50. Five Star had a mix of small SUVs. It was actually the best selection I've seen at a Hertz location in well over a year.
RIC has since gotten much worse. Arrived this morning, "Carfirmation" email said ultimate choice, pick anything in the President's Choice area. Counter inside had a sign out front, it said gold board walk outside up elevator/escalator to garage. The gold board displayed nothing, and the cars didn't have keys in them.
Go to the counter upstairs and apparently Ultimate Choice is no longer a thing. You just get given the car they want to give you. Booked intermediate, got a Nissan rogue.
There were two signs of taped on with all the adhesive on the passenger rear door. Couldn't be bothered to get a razor blade to remove them for whatever they were showing...
...which I'm pretty sure is that the car had been smoked in, as the faint smoke smell still lingered. You couldn't even clean it properly?
Corporate standard is Hertz or Sixt for corporate negotiated rates so I'll probably keep renting here unless the experience continues to be consistently awful or I can get a roughly competitive price either including the loss damage waiver.
EDIT: I am informed that all of these negative changes occurred roughly a month ago. I don't see any indication that the location is franchised, so seems to be corporate run.